Comfort to the Enemy
by REB Jenn
Summary: Lucifer's rising in front of Sam & Dean ; an archangel's descending on Castiel. Picks up where the 4.22 finale left off.
1. Part 1 of 4

**Disclaimer:** If they were mine, there'd be more whumping and a _lot_ more hugging. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no profit is being made from it. The characters belong to Eric Kripke and the CW. I am only borrowing them and no (real) harm is intended.

**Rated:** T, for language and some violence.

**Spoilers:** Generally for Season 4, and specifically for episode 4.22.

**Notes: **This is angel!whump of the most self-indulgent kind. It's also gen.

I guess it's fanon/canon that Castiel doesn't _need_ to eat, sleep, breathe… but he does bleed in canon, which implies—to me!—a heartbeat. So for the purpose of this story, his vessel still has a pulse, respirates automatically, etc.

_Edited 7/31 to fix all the annoying little typos I missed the first 25 times I went over this._

Onward.

* * *

**Comfort to the Enemy**

* * *

"_He's coming."_

Dean's hand is still clutched in Sam's jacket. His brother stares, transfixed, and his grip on Dean's own arm loosens.

Otherworldly light fountains up from the pit in the floor, flooding the chapel. They should be blinded, but the light merely scours them with its power, humming deep in their bones.

Sam takes a step forward.

* * *

The windows of the Prophet's dwelling implode in a brittle spray. He yelps and drops into a crouch, one arm thrown up protectively before him.

Light thunders down from the heavens, gushing into the squalid rooms. It rushes pitilessly through the clutter, extinguishing insignificant vermin -- mouse, roach, fly -- in its path.

Castiel has time only to lift his chin, steadfast, before he is seized and snatched out through the nearest empty window frame.

* * *

"Sam, no!"

Dean digs his fingers tighter in Sam's jacket and pulls. For a horrifyingly long moment, Sam resists; and then Dean tugs again and Sam blinks, and gasps, and turns anguished eyes to his big brother.

"Sam, outta here! _Now_."

There's no resistance now as he drags Sam across the chapel. The light is so intense it's drowning him, filling his chest to bursting. Dean squeezes jacket until his fingers go numb, and he crashes through the ruined chapel doors.

It's barely dimmer in the corridor. The light finds every crack in stone and wood and blazes through, shooting a multi-pointed beacon to the sky.

It's blasting up, and out, and whether it's bringing Lucifer or Lucifer's bringing it, Dean isn't sure. He just knows he needs to get them _out_ of this infernal light.

The light's rising from below, so Dean instinctively heads in its opposite direction—down. He lurches along the corridor, hauling a stumbling Sam after him. They come to a door set in the stone wall, and he kicks in the decaying boards. It's only a shallow closet.

The next door they come to is tucked into the angled stonework of a staircase leading to a collapsed choir loft. Dean yanks it open, leaving an arc of soft rotten wood dust on the flagstone. A sagging wooden staircase descends to a cellar below.

"In." He spins Sam through the doorway. "Get in, get in!"

"Dean…"

"_In_, Sam. Go down."

Thankfully, Sam does. Dean waits only until Sam's rattled down the rickety steps, and then he follows, forcing the door shut behind him. Too much light is still pouring around the doorframe and under the ragged sill, but it's the best he can do.

Sam's standing helplessly at the foot of the stairs, head ducked beneath the low ceiling. Dean grabs his shoulder. "Get as far down as we can," he tells him. "As far out of the light as possible."

The corner beneath the staircase is darkest. Dean crowds Sam under the crossbraces, into the cobwebbed angle where stone foundations meet, and pushes him down. Sam sits, boots scraping on gritty brick when he draws his knees up.

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"Quiet." Dean keeps a hand pressed on Sam's shoulder as he throws a glance around the cellar. The gaps around the door allow a strange half-light to fill the room, revealing drifts of moldy paper, some broken sticks of furniture, and graffiti-splashed walls. There are no other doors or windows, and no light seeps up from between the bricks that form the floor. Dean takes that as a good sign… until the room brightens even more. His skin prickles and when he sucks in a startled breath, he tastes an electric snap on his tongue.

Dean slides down beside Sam, pressing his brother's head to his knees. "Don't look, Sammy. If this shit is anything like angel light…"

"Dean, I…"

"Close your eyes, dammit! Don't look. Don't look at it."

Jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with his brother, Dean clamps the crook of his right elbow over his eyes. He's just twisted the fingers of his left hand through Sam's beltloop when the heavy beat of wings fills the air.

* * *

In a blink, Castiel is high above the Earth, plucked up so fast he is still attached to his vessel. He twists in the cataclysmic rush of wind, human and angel selves locked together, gripped at shoulderblades and wings' base by an implacable archangel hand.

A beat later they are far north of the dwelling of the Prophet, and, Castiel reflects grimly, far from Maryland as well. To buy Dean more time, he struggles in the archangel's grasp, throwing himself side to side with enough force that the powerful wings miss a beat. He reaches up and claws at the massive wrist, ignoring the resulting wrench in the roots of his wings.

The archangel banks, giving his captive a sharp shake. The shockwave whipcracks down Castiel's body, tearing loose his hands and snapping his head forward and back. A red-hot brand rips through his upper back.

He twists again anyway, reaching up to once more wring at the wrist while thrashing his lower body violently.

The archangel's hold falters. Feathers rake through gigantic fingers; Castiel feels shafts crush and bones snap as he slips free. Before he slips too far, an impact explodes against the side of his head.

He has been swatted like a bothersome insect.

He is falling. Not Falling, just… plummeting. Towards the ground. He is half in and half out of his vessel, mind ringing in a skull that may not still be attached.

There is an almighty jerk and something in the base of his wings tears. The agony blanks his senses.

When his vision clears, they are climbing, the vessel and Castiel hanging limp from that hand cinched tight around one crushed wing. When he struggles, it is but a feeble token protest.

They reach an altitude where the air thins out. Castiel can breathe only in strained gasps, arms dangling limply from ruined shoulders. The archangel gathers him to his chest in a parody of an embrace, a rushing eddy of feathertips brushing Castiel's face. The grip on his shattered wing tightens, and at the base of his throat, a weighty thumb digs in.

_Ah. Here is the price of my disobedience._ His Grace torn free, his life snuffed out. Castiel's head falls back beneath the relentless pressure of that thumb, and he prays that Dean was successful. The ache in the pit of his stomach is, he thinks, sorrow.

Below, light suddenly explodes skyward. Pure beams cast a terrible new dawn over the curve of the earth, visible even from their great height.

The archangel goes still, ageless eyes taking in the spreading glow on the horizon. Muscles bunch. Immense wings push off, launching him toward his new target.

Castiel is discarded, forgotten.

* * *

Air pressure pops Dean's ears, followed by the deep vibration in his ribcage that usually means bass music turned awesomely loud. Sam makes a pained noise and Dean, arm still clamped over his eyes, digs his feet against the floor and shoves them both deeper into the corner.

The wingbeats are frantic now, and the hair on the brothers' bodies rises and flattens in the pulses of unhearable voices. Light pours through eyelids and clothing and flesh until Dean thinks he can see his very bones an inch from his closed eyes, bizarre x-ray vision he'd rather not have.

And then suddenly, the light is gone. It coalesces into a point high above the convent, and then flashes away. Wingbeats recede after it, taking the prickling sensation of subsonic speech with them. Thick silence closes over the chapel.

At first, they don't dare move. Dean can taste dust and a tinge of brimstone, and he coughs. The sound is barely audible through his stunned ears.

"Sammy? You okay?"

Beside him, Sam stirs, head tilting forward in slow degrees. "Dean? I didn't… I didn't… Oh, god, Dean, did I really…?"

There are after-images sliding all over Dean's vision. He squints through them, loosens his cramped fingers from Sam's beltloop, and hauls himself upright on the staircase's crossbrace. "Shut up for now, Sam, okay? We're sitting in the biggest damn ground zero ever known to man. It's gotta have attracted attention. We need to get the holy fuck away from here." He ducks through the bracing. "You can still hear, right? Your eyes okay?"

"I think so." Sam rises as if his joints are frozen, crawling slowly through the bracing after Dean.

"Then we need to get outta here."

They creep up the stairs, Dean in the lead with his back pressed to the wall. Sam trails in his wake, stumbling on every third stair tread. The harsh scrape of the cellar door opening echoes in the silent corridors.

Nothing stirs in the convent—all beings gathered there have fled across the skies. Dean and Sam duck past the chapel entrance; at its wrecked doors, Sam comes to a jerky stop.

"We… we should…"

"No." Dean clamps his fist around Sam's elbow and tugs firmly. "We shouldn't."

He hauls Sam away from the bodies and the gaping hole in the chapel floor. As fanciful New Age crap as it sounds, he doesn't like the echoes in there. They don't have the time nor equipment to burn the place clean, and Dean doesn't want his brother in that toxic shit for another second.

He bursts through the outer doors and out into crisp night air, Ruby's knife held ready. The property is deserted, and undamaged save for a fresh layer of shredded twigs and leaves cycloned across the ground. A siren wails, rising and falling in the damp air, on and on and on.

"Let's go! We're too damn close to D.C. This place is gonna be swarming with god knows who any second—cops, feds, hell, Homeland Security. Haul ass, Sam!"

"Where?" his brother croaks.

"Bobby's, I guess." The thought stops Dean in his tracks. "Bobby's! The Impala's still at Bobby's!"

"How did… how did you get here then? How did you _know_ to come here?" Sam asks, shame bleeding his voice thin.

"Long story. Where's your ride? How'd _you_ get to Maryland?"

Sam points down the overgrown drive. "Ruby's car," he whispers.

* * *

Castiel plummets Earthward, tumbling end over end. His vessel's limbs flop in an uncoordinated tangle around the knot of pain that is his body. Falling too fast to draw breath, his vision hazes out until all he sees is the eerie blaze on the horizon.

A blaze that means he was too late in his decision to help Dean. Regret weaves through the sorrow in his belly, a deep ache he knows is nothing to what Dean is feeling at his brother's actions.

If Dean still lives.

If he does, he is a fugitive. A wanted man who will continue to fight for Sam, no matter that Heaven's and Hell's forces will be arrayed against them.

His own work is nowhere near finished.

Castiel summons the strength to unfurl his one still-functional wing. For a long moment he cannot overcome the tremendous velocity; and then slowly, the joints unfold and tendons stretch. The wing spreads wide, and the 'whump' of air caught within resonates across the dark sky. Castiel flips upright, headlong descent checked.

A rain of feathers is shaken loose by the abrupt slowdown. Each luminous for a beat before dulling, they drift downward, plumes charcoaled by the years besieging Hell nearly invisible in the darkness.

Castiel watches with indifference as they drop away. One-winged, he sinks awkwardly after them, trying, and failing, to settle fully back into the vessel. It is damaged, and so is he. If he can reach the ground without further trauma, perhaps he can put the body right again.

The wing is a worry, though.

The next moment an updraft surges through his tattered feathers, upsetting his fragile balance. He is wrenched into a sharp downturn, the right side of his body dragging heavily like a pivot point. Gravity spins him down, and around, into an ever-descending spiral.

Trying to ascend or even level off with only one working wing will only send him tumbling again. Grimly, he struggles for control as the ground rushes toward him in dizzying loops.

And then Castiel is slamming into the treetops, thick firs and spruces that barely cushion the impact. He rips down through the trees, tearing off boughs with sharp cracks that echo like gunshots through the remote forest. Needles slash past and he feels the rough scrape of bark on skin. In an avalanche of branches, needles, and feathers, Castiel breaks through the lowest limbs and comes to ground with an earth-shaking crash.

Not even decades of fallen needles can soften the landing. As the echoes die away, blackness folds over the angel.

* * *

After all the horrors of the night, this one should be far, far down on Dean's list.

But it's not.

This isn't just some ride Ruby boosted for spiriting Sam off to their Prom Date with Destiny; this is indeed Ruby's personal car. Probably stole it in the first place, but it's been in her possession long enough to leave a mark. Evil lingers like a stain in the upholstery and paint.

And he has to drive this _piece of shit_ if he wants to get their asses out of St. Mary's Convent, Ilchester.

He wrenches open the Mustang's door and leans in. Seems Ruby has –_ had_ – no fear of it being stolen from her. The key, clipped to a plastic ketchup bottle keyring, dangles from the ignition. He drops into the driver's seat, bashing his head on the unfamiliar doorframe and his knees on the steering column in the process, and jams the seat back.

He's never missed the Impala as much as when Sam slides in the passenger seat, folding himself easily into the cramped Mustang with chilling familiarity. He plunks his elbow onto the armrest and turns expectant puppy eyes to Dean, as he must have done dozens – maybe hundreds – of times with Ruby.

Deans stomach curls over. He chokes back the cry that rises automatically, _Sam, why?, _and slaps the car into gear.

They drive. Sam, his voice a low mutter, points out the route away from the convent using back roads he and Ruby slipped in on, just as blue and red lights begin to strobe behind them. They skirt the town and head north.

Dean digs his cell out of his pocket and tosses it to Sam. "Call Bobby. Let him know we're okay. I kinda disappeared on him."

He sneaks sideways glances at Sam staring at the phone in his hand. Finally his brother swallows, straightens his shoulders, and flips it open. "Bobby? It's Sam. Yeah, yeah, we're okay. Yeah, Dean's right here, with me. Driving. Yeah, I think so." He flicks an anxious glance at Dean and then goes back to studying his knees. A muscle in his jaw clenches. "Yeah, he's out. I did it. It was me, Bobby. Killing Lilith…" He winces, and Dean can hear Bobby's bellow through the airwaves. "I know. I know it, Bobby. I know what I did." He listens, and his voice is choked when he speaks again. "I will, I swear it." He holds the phone out to Dean. "You want to talk to him?"

Dean raises his voice without taking the phone. "Later, Bobby. We're on our way—tell you everything when we get there. What'd he say?" he adds when Sam closes the phone.

"That I shoulda been smarter than this. And that I need to make it right."

"You do."

Sam doesn't answer. He turns aside and rests his head on the window, his eyes focused on the darkness beyond it.

* * *

When he opens his eyes, not even the light on the horizon remains. Castiel casts out – _dean_ – and finally finds him, still alive, presence faint beneath the fierce battle raging in the sky above him.

Castiel withdraws and huddles into himself. Although it is unlikely his brothers and sisters have the inclination at the moment to seek him out, he goes deeply quiet. He allows healing to trickle slowly, too slowly, through cells sundered by the crash—split head, cracked spine, internal organs burst and leaking. After a disconcertingly long interval, the very worst of the vessel's damage is mended.

However, cut off from the ebb and surge of his brethren's connection, the angelic injuries resist repair. He closes his eyes for another long moment, drawing deep on Grace that flickers ominously under the strain. He must recover enough to re-join Dean.

Pushing shakily to his feet, Castiel raises his eyes skyward, and leaps.

* * *

They drive north, making record time out of Maryland and into Pennsylvania. Dean stops at a tiny gas station in the foothills of the Appalachians to replace the fumes in the Mustang's tank with gas and to buy a map; the only things he found in the glove compartment were some ketchup packets, a couple of scratched _Now That's What I Call Music _CDs, and a registration card issued to a Kristy M. Rubin.

"What's with the ketchup?" he asks Sam, standing beneath the buzzing yellow lights of the pump canopy. He flattens the map across the Mustang's hood while the tank fills.

"She likes – _liked_ – fries," Sam says hoarsely, and flinches when Dean spits out a curse.

"You _mourning_ her, Sam?" he snarls.

Sam wordlessly shakes his head. He peels away from the fender propping him up and sags back into the car.

Dean returns from paying with a fistful of Slim Jims and a bag of chips—meat and potatoes, convenience store style. He offers one meatstick to Sam, and after a brief hesitation, Sam takes it. Dean pretends not to notice that he doesn't actually eat it, just runs it through his fingers, end over end, on one blue-jeaned knee.

They pull back out onto the road. Ruby rode her car as hard as her hosts—the steering pulls to the left, the gears won't engage without a fight, and there's a bitter burning smell when the Mustang gets up over forty. But there is a slick new stereo system fitted into the rattling dashboard. _Gotta love a girl – demon, whatever – with priorities_, Dean sneers to himself.

Sam taps the window, drawing attention to a roadsign. "Turnpike's ahead, north of Gettysburg."

"Nuh-uh." Dean shakes his head. "Gonna keep to the smaller roads; we'll pick up Route 30 to head west." He cranes to peer at the roadsign as they pass, and shivers. "Gonna give Gettysburg a miss first. Night like tonight, who knows what got woken up out there."

"Yeah." Sam sinks back in his seat, burrowing his chin into his jacket collar. "Remember that re-enactment regiment, the one that got that soldier's spirit stirred up with all their charging around in the woods?"

"That's why I'm giving Gettysburg a miss." Dean hunches forward over the wheel and tries to coax a little more speed from Ruby's piece-of-shit Mustang.

* * *

Castiel descends at a steep angle, just barely missing the tree at the foot of his trajectory. He needs… just a moment's respite. His landing drops him to his knees beside a thick knobbly root. He kneels there, stunned and swaying. His back is a ravaged mess and he makes another attempt to heal his twisted wing. The effort exhausts him almost immediately; he tips forward, coming to rest rather abruptly face-first against the trunk.

The tree is an oak, ancient and vast, the branches above just beginning to leaf out. It is not a Grace-born oak, but he draws some measure of strength from it nevertheless. When he is able to raise his head, Castiel casts outward, finding Dean at once. They have drawn nearer, but a great stretch of land still lies between them.

It is only a matter of time until demons pick up the brothers' trail. Sam burned those foul hex bags when he wanted to draw Lilith in, thinking they shielded him and Dean from her sight. Of course they had done no such thing, but low-level demons are another matter. Once they notice the cloaking is gone – and they will – the demons will be tracking the Winchesters again.

Castiel pushes to his feet, walking one hand up the oak's trunk for support. His wingtips drag in the leaf litter and dirt; he tucks up the left one, but the other is too crippled to fold.

In addition to demons, there will be two separate angel factions after Dean—gunning for him, Dean himself would say, and Castiel is oddly pleased to use a term Dean would.

Zachariah's faction wants him as their weapon to bring down Lucifer, and if Dean ends up dead in the process, so much the better to tie up loose ends.

The other just wants him dead, before he kills their Fallen brother.

Castiel wobbles out from beneath the oak's broad canopy. Face tilted to the sky, he casts out – _dean_ – and when he has found his target, leaps.

.


	2. Part 2 of 4

See chapter 1 for disclaimers/notes.

Thank you to all the people who have read and/or reviewed! I really appreciate it :)

* * *

**Comfort to the Enemy**

* * *

North of Pittsburgh, Dean swings west toward Ohio. The back end of the Mustang has picked up a _really fucking annoying_ shimmy, and just keeping the car centered in its lane is wearing him out. There's still the Midwest to get across, too. He thinks come nighttime he'll boost a different car; there's too much daylight right now for Grand Theft Auto.

Dean shoots a glance to the side. Sam is entirely too comfortable in this car, too; he's got his seat tipped back to just the right angle so his stupidly long legs can stretch a bit and his eyes are half-closed. How he can relax is beyond Dean ; just _breathing_ in this damned car makes him uneasy. He's got absolutely zero of that psychic crap, not that he needs it to sense the bad mojo trapped in the Mustang's bones.

Anger starts to churn in his gut. _You're real used to riding shotgun in this thing, Sam_, he thinks. _What exactly have you been doing with Ruby when you're not getting naked with her?_

He shoots another glare at Sam and opens his mouth to ask him that very question when his brother snaps bolt upright. "Dean! Look out!"

He jerks his attention back to the road. Something pale tumbles from out of nowhere onto the center line. Dean cranks the wheel sideways, tires screaming. The Mustang careens past the sprawled shape, leaving a curved dark skid on the pavement. It rocks to a halt, smoke spilling from the undercarriage.

Sam's twisted into a pretzel, trying to see out the rear window. "Where did that come from?"

Dean slams the car into park and the engine hiccups once, twice, before it coughs and dies. He has a _bad_ feeling, shit, yes, he does. He throws open the door and races back to the shape on the road.

Crumpled cloth, tan streaked with rust, lying in a heap in the middle of a Pennsylvania back road. Dean almost doesn't want to look.

"Goddamn," he whispers, and puts his hand on the sleeve of a trenchcoat. "Cas?"

He tugs, gently, and the figure rolls, head lolling on the pavement. Blue eyes, pupils blown wide, stare vacantly up at him.

"Cas!" Dean slides one hand beneath a shirt collar considerably less white than the last time he saw the angel, and presses down. A pulse stutters beneath his fingers and he huffs out a relieved gasp. Dean throws a frantic glance back at the car. "Sam! Come help me!"

Sam pulls himself out of the car slowly, rubbing his palms on his jeans. Dean turns back to the angel, taking in the tears in the clothing, and the bloody scrapes beneath. There's a giant bruise darkening one whole side of Castiel's face, radiating out from a deep split on his cheekbone. Dean touches a thumb to the seeping blood. "Cas? Why aren't you healing yourself?"

Sam skates a nervous glance over the angel and then stares at the ground. "What… what should we do?"

"I dunno. I haven't ever seen him this bad off." Dean shifts on his heels and squeezes his way up each of Castiel's legs, then down his arms, feeling for broken bones. The pressure prompts a shudder to rock Castiel's body, and Dean looks up, startled, in time to catch a flash of life return to his eyes. "Dean," Castiel croaks.

There's actual emotion in that one word.

"Yeah," Dean answers, and then blurts, "You came back."

Castiel tips his head in the slightest nod. "I felt I must find you. You and your brother are in grave danger."

"We kinda figured." The creases in Dean's forehead deepen as he runs another look over Castiel. "You don't look so good yourself."

"I will recover," he says dismissively. "We should depart."

"Yeah, okay." Dean tightens his grip on Castiel's arm. When the angel doesn't move, he frowns. "You need a boost?"

"I… I think so." The angel's expression is suddenly weary, and Dean jerks his head at his brother.

"Sam, gimme a hand."

Sam steps closer, his eyes flitting everywhere but the angel's face. "Okay, ready."

"You take that side, I've got this one, we'll lift on three."

Dean slides his right arm beneath Castiel's shoulders and the angel goes rigid. A piercing blast of sheer noise rips from his throat.

Sam flings himself back and away, clapping both hands over his ears as he shouts in pain. Dean manages, barely, to not drop his charge back onto the roadway. He's heard Castiel's true voice before, and though the sound makes his teeth vibrate, he's not completely unprepared for it. He yanks his hand from beneath the angel and the noise cuts off. Castiel sags down, panting.

Ears ringing, Dean rolls the angel up onto his side. "Dean, what the hell…? What _was_ that?" Sam yelps as Dean pulls at the back of the trenchcoat.

It's rent down the middle, the edges ragged and trailing threads as if the coat has been ripped violently apart, not cut. The suit jacket under it is the same, and so is the shirt below that, and the layers of all are absolutely _drenched_ in blood. Dean scissors his fingers in the gaping cloth. The glimpse beneath the clothing is enough to show him why Cas is looking so rough.

"Jesus!" he whispers.

Castiel cocks his head toward Dean, and unbelievably, a faint smile ghosts across his lips. "No—archangel."

"That's not funny, Cas." He clenches his fists and grinds them against his thighs. "What did the bastard do to you?"

"I said I would hold him off," is all he replies. He motions with one hand. "Give me that boost?"

Dean closes his eyes and breathes hard through his nose. Finally he nods and shifts back into a crouch. "Sam?"

They hoist with a lot more caution this time. Castiel sways only slightly when he's upright, and, after the barest pause, steps toward the Mustang, Dean's arm locked around his waist, a fistful of coat in his other hand. Sam stumbles alongside, then disentangles his arm and hurries ahead to flip the driver's seat forward.

"Go 'round the other side an' get his legs," Dean grunts, and Sam hustles to comply. "Duck your head, Cas."

Dean spreads his hand over the back of Castiel's head to guide him, and the angel bends, Sam reaching for him through the passenger door. He starts to squeeze into the backseat when he arches in agony.

Castiel's head snaps back and another thunderclap of sound rips the air. Sam howls, lurches back and cracks his head on the roof, and tumbles out of the car. The hair on Dean's arms stands on end; tears flood his eyes while he grits his teeth and hangs on to the vibrating body in his grasp.

The dome light pops, and then the side windows shatter in a cascade of glass. Castiel staggers backward, legs wobbling, and collapses to the pavement again, Dean following him down with a desperate grip on his coat lapels.

With a crisp splitting sound, the windshield cracks diagonally across its width.

"Cas? Cas!" Dean pats at his cheek, seizes his chin and gives it a shake. The angel's head flops limply. "Cas, what the hell?"

Sam circles the Mustang at a run and snatches at his brother's shoulder. "Dean, maybe you should get away from him!"

Dean shakes him off. "Quit it! He's hurt. Cas!"

The angel's eyelids drag upward, revealing eyes so dilated only a thin ring of blue shows. "I… seem to have a problem with my wing," he rasps.

Dean goes still, and even Sam's gaze flies up and fixes on Castiel's face. "What kind of problem?" Dean asks, voice deadly quiet.

Castiel seems oddly reluctant to answer. "It will not… fold into the vessel's back," he says finally.

Dean nods. "And why is that?" he asks evenly.

The angel's gaze slips to the side. "Help me up. We must go."

"Answer me first."

He must be getting used to Dean's stubbornness, because he only presses his lips together and then admits, "It is broken."

"Broken." Dean eases him into a sitting position with a steady pull on the coat lapels, because he's a little too freaked to touch anywhere on that blood-soaked back, if he's gonna be honest here. "Broken—with your clothes torn apart and blood everywhere and screaming in angel." Castiel hunches forward and doesn't respond. "Just _broken?_"

"Dean, look!" Sam gasps, and Dean follows his pointing finger.

Something drops away behind Castiel, a sort of shifting in the air. It's not shadow, not quite light, more like an absence of solidity. It flutters down, and for an instant darkly gleams against the roadbed, a delicately curved plume that winks out before Dean can reach for it.

His gaze whips back to Castiel's. "Just _broken_, Cas?" he snarls.

The angel looks away in the face of the fury blazing out at him. "As I told you before, an archangel is absolute," he says quietly. "His power and strength are profound."

"And were used to rip you apart."

Castiel presses his lips together again, and then his shoulders sag infinitesimally. "Nearly," he admits, low.

Dean has a really long, foul, and profane litany of curses all lined up, but he bites them back with effort. "Can you fix it?"

"Maybe. In time." Castiel's expression is almost pleading. "I am trying to stay out of sight of the other angels."

"And healing yourself would attract their attention?"

"The energy needed for that amount of repair? Yes."

Dean grinds his teeth together, then takes a deep breath. "Alrighty then." He takes Castiel's arm, motions for Sam to get the other. "We'll just have to patch you up ourselves and hope for the best."

At the car door once more, Castiel hangs back. "I… I am not going to fit."

"You have to. This is our only ride."

"I think... if you can fold it, I can keep it flat and out of the way."

Dean's stomach knots and he has to swallow before he can ask, "How?"

Castiel braces folded arms on the Mustang's roof and lowers his forehead to them. "Reach up; I'll try…" His voice goes tight. "There—do you see…?"

"Yeah," Dean breathes, because there, in front of him, is a broad, ragged-edged silhouette of a wing. It drags crookedly down Castiel's back, but still… Angel. Wing.

Beside him, Sam makes a small sound of wonder. Dean reaches up, and the silhouette shimmers, light caught in its depths, and his fingers sink into a soft, dry weightiness.

"You need to press up, and inward," Castiel tells him. "The joints will catch; you will need to force them closed."

Dean swallows again. "It'll hurt like a bitch," he croaks.

"Yes." The angel's voice is matter-of-fact. "Do it anyway."

"Sam." Dean's heart feels ready to burst out of his chest. "Hold him still."

Sam hangs back, mouth opening and closing in silent protest. When Dean jerks his head insistently, Sam scuffs forward and shoves against the angel's human body. His hands flutter uncertainly before falling to shoulder and waist and bearing down, hard.

Feathers shift under Dean's palms. He closes his eyes for a second, then makes himself open them and look closely at the wing's structure. He can see where the bones are bent, the joints askew, but he can also see how the wing needs to furl so it will sink into Cas' back. Before he can change his mind, he slams all his weight forward.

There's no piercing angel voice this time, but only because Castiel bites through his own arm. There's a sickening crunch and the wing closes like a folding door. It vanishes from Dean's sight—his hands seem to be braced in mid-air.

Sam is fighting to hold Castiel still on the side of the car, the angel nearly wrenching free despite Sam's strength. Dean's hands are caught a foot or so from the bloodied trenchcoat and then there's a dull snap and the heels of his hands punch down onto Castiel's upper back.

Castiel goes completely limp and slides down the fender.

"Catch him!" Dean barks, scrabbling for a better hold, but Sam's already halted his slide, jamming him against the car with a knee in the back of his waist. Staggering under the slack weight, he heaves the angel over to Dean.

"If you can hold him a sec, I'll go around and pull him in."

"Yeah." Dean slides his hands under Cas' arms and braces him. Guy's not that big, but damn he's heavy. He leans back and concentrates on not throwing up.

Sam crawls through the backseat and reaches out the open driver's door. "Shove his feet over here."

They drag the angel into the car and across the seat, left side – the unbroken side – down. Dean peels off his jacket and bunches it beneath Castiel's head. The bruise looks particularly nasty; can angels get concussions? In case they can, knocking against the side of Ruby's piece-of-shit Mustang all the way to South Dakota is just going to make it worse.

By the time he has the jacket tucked in place, Castiel's alert again, watching the activity with his usual detached interest. A new patch of red is seeping through his left coatsleeve, and Dean draws the arm out straight, shoving all the sleeves up.

"Shit. Sam, are there any towels or spare clothes in this heap?"

"Unless you see something lying around, no."

"What about the trunk?"

His brother flinches. "No. I know it's completely empty."

There's a weird insistence in Sam's voice that Dean doesn't have time to follow up on. He shrugs out of his button-down and slices off one sleeve with the knife, wrapping the makeshift bandage around Castiel's bitten arm. "Try to keep that still, okay?" He folds what's left of his shirt into a loose square and slides it down behind his back. "Can you lean back to hold that in place?"

"Yes."

"That'll have to do until we can stop for the night, someplace safe."

"Sanctuary," Castiel murmurs, easing back into the seat with a side-to-side settling motion.

"Yeah, sure." Dean doesn't think such a concept exists, not after last night. But the guy just got ripped in half trying to help him stop Sam from making the biggest freakin' mistake of his life—he can afford to humor him a little.

They leave Pennsylvania behind. The fresh crack across the windshield makes Dean cross-eyed at first until his eyes get used to ignoring it. His arm tires from trying to keep the steering wheel straight and Sam squirms, unable to slouch against the missing window. Dean twists the rearview mirror until he can see into the backseat.

Castiel is silent, paler than usual, his face slick with sweat. "Check on him, will you?" Dean asks, and Sam contorts himself over the center console to reach back.

"Breathing's shallow, his pulse is pretty thready, and he's cold and clammy," Sam reports. He slithers back into his seat. "I think he's going into shock. Maybe we should find a hospital."

"And tell 'em what, Sam? 'Our buddy here needs help, he's had his wings torn off, oh by the way, he's a freakin' _angel!_ Yeah, that'll go over real well."

Sam turns to stare out the open window. "Just trying to help."

"You've helped plenty. Just…" Dean breaks off, shakes his head. "Never mind."

The wind roaring through the windows fills the silence as he drives.

* * *

They stop to fill the tank again in a grey little rust-belt town. Dean buys coffee, pastries, bottles of water, and Sam shuffles around the corner to the restroom. A dog starts up barking and won't quit.

Dean doesn't want to admit he's jittery with Sam out of his sight. He folds the driver's seat forward and crouches by the open door. "Cas? Think you can manage some water?"

The angel's eyes creep open, slowly, and just as slowly come into focus. "Dean."

"That's me." He cracks the lid open and offers the bottle. "Drink this, okay?'

Castiel studies it with grave intensity and then, still painfully slowly, shifts his gaze back to Dean. "Nourishment is not necessary to sustain my vessel."

"It may not be necessary, but it may do some good. C'mon, Cas; you're havin' trouble healing. Give your body a little help."

"All right," Castiel concedes. Dean helps him sit up and then hands him the bottle. He empties it in two gulps.

Dean pitches the plastic bottle into the footwell. "You want another?"

"Later, perhaps." He's still for a moment before his head turns just a fraction and he looks out at the gas station. Off behind the building, the dog is still barking frantically, sounding like it's half-strangling itself on its own chain.

"It's freaking out at Sam, isn't it?" Dean asks quietly.

"Yes." Castiel brings his gaze back to the man crouched beside him, head bowed.

"Can we fix him?"

"Maybe. In time." He touches Dean's sagging shoulder with a grimed and blood-smeared hand. "This part of the story is still being written. Your brother still has choices that will affect the outcome."

Dean drops his face into his hands and hunches there until he hears Sam's gigantic boots crunching across the parking lot.

* * *

Sam holds his forgotten coffee cup long past the time the liquid inside cools down and grows a thin milk skin across the surface. Only when Dean takes a railroad crossing at 35 and stale coffee slops down Sam's hand does he curse and sit up straight. Before Dean can build up speed again, he turns and tips the contents of the cup out the window in a thin beige stream. Most of it blows backward and splatters all down the side of Ruby's car.

Except… it's not Ruby's car to care about… not anymore.

Sam's mouth twists, and to hide his involuntary reaction, he turns and drops the empty cup over the seat to join the rest of the litter on the floor. He catches sight of the silent figure slumped in the back, and then he takes a second look and reaches between the front seats.

"Dean, he's bleeding."

Dean's on autopilot, foot heavy on the accelerator, eyes distant on a faraway horizon. He shakes out of it only reluctantly. "What? I know."

"No, I mean… he's really. Bleeding. It's on the floor."

Dean swivels, trying to see into the back. The Mustang swerves into the oncoming lane and Sam yelps a warning. Dean cranks the wheel back and stomps the brake, manhandling the car onto the shoulder. He's out of it before it rolls to a full stop, tires smoking, and he slaps the driver's seat forward.

Castiel is deathly still; he's so pale Dean's afraid the "deathly" part is literal. He presses the clammy throat and locates a faint pulse jumping erratically under his fingers.

The blood has soaked beneath the angel's human body and is dripping in slow rivulets along the stitched channels in the seat, turning the carpet below a glistening black. Dean's stomach turns; there's something obscene and, yeah, _unholy_, about an angel's blood spilling in the vehicle of a demon.

"Cas. Hey."

The angel's eyelids do that extreme-slow-motion lifting again. It takes another minute for his eyes to focus outward. "Hello, Dean."

"You gotta do the healing thing, Cas. You're losing too much blood."

He twitches his head in a minute shake. "Exposing us to my brethren is unwise."

"Having the only one who can help us bleed out in the backseat is unwise! Just… repair the blood vessels, could you?"

Castiel goes quiet, turning inward for moment. "You said there would be a safe place to stop for the night?"

"I dunno about safe, exactly, but safer than sleeping in the car out in the open, yeah."

"If you can find this place, I will attempt to mend the most pressing damage."

Speaking seems to have worn him out. He subsides, doing that settling-in motion again. Dean sticks his hand over the seat. "Gimme your shirt, Sam."

He folds it in behind Cas' back, where it quickly darkens with blood. "Lean all the way back, okay? Keep pressure on it. I'll find a motel."

They're deep in Amish country; Dean blows by five different buggies as they race to the next town large enough for accommodations. Signs by the road are advertising fresh eggs and quilts for sale, alongside billboards for campgrounds and boat rentals.

A long, gentle slope leads into the small town, allowing Dean to see a few motels widely spaced along the roadway. He picks one at random and pulls in.

The kid behind the counter is thin, hiding behind long dark bangs, and apparently going for a record of fewest words spoken. Silently he scoots a check-in form across the countertop to Dean, and just as silently runs his credit card. Dean watches the TV bolted to the back wall while the card processes; the scenes it's showing are just everyday destruction and violence—various wars, another pirate attack off the coast of Africa, rioting, a clinic bombing, a missing 5-year-old.

If the Apocalypse is happening, it's still under the radar.

The scrolling words along the bottom of the screen catch Dean's eye – an investigation into a possible explosion in rural Maryland is continuing – dozens of reports have been received of "brilliant" lights in the sky, but no source has been located and no debris found. Medical Examiners and forensic teams are assembling at an old church.

Dean has to wonder how freaked they're going to be by the remnants of a real, actual Satan-worshipping ritual.

He scrawls a signature on the credit slip. "What's a decent place to get a meal around here?" The kid passes over a handful of flyers without comment. "How about a Sears or a Wal-Mart or something like that?"

He can't figure out a non-verbal response. "Down that way, right onto Black Creek Pike, then about a mile to the shopping center," the kid mumbles, looking disappointed in himself as he hands over the key.

Dean pockets it and wheels out of the office. The door slaps closed behind him as he goes to collect his co-pilots.

.


	3. Part 3 of 4

See chapter 1 for disclaimer/notes.

Thank you to all my readers & reviewers. I'm grateful to every one of you!

* * *

**Comfort to the Enemy**

* * *

Their motel room's all the way at the end of the row, Dean made sure of that. He pulls the Mustang in so the driver's side faces away from the office window, and tosses Sam the room key. "Pull the curtains shut, wouldya?"

"It is not nightfall," Castiel says when Dean jams the seat forward and half-climbs into the backseat.

"Nah, but I'm gettin' tired. Hungry, too. You gotta sit up, Cas, and swing your legs out the door."

His back pulls stickily away from the Mustang's upholstery. Dean's stomach lurches—Jimmy Novak can't possibly have any blood left in his body. He can only hope angels can refill their vessels damn quick.

Sam edges beside them and hoists, and Castiel is out, swaying on the gravel parking lot. His knees keep buckling, and he can't seem to figure out the "walk toward the door" part, so Dean ducks, gets his shoulder under an arm, and, ignoring the angel's sudden tensing, straightens up.

"He's dripping," Sam says.

"So scuff over it," Dean snaps, and shuffles them both through the motel door. Castiel's feet catch on the threshold, and then Sam's behind them, hauling the angel upright by the waistband of his pants.

Dean guides him to the table pushed up against the back wall. "I know you'd rather be horizontal," he tells Castiel as he kicks one chair out, "but this is gonna work better to patch you up."

"This is fine." The angel's voice is preternaturally calm, but the tremors running through him head to foot are a giveaway that things are anything but fine. Dean lowers him to the seat and braces him before he topples.

Sam's staring down at his own outspread, blood-smeared hands with an expression of quiet horror. "What… what made the archangel do this? I thought it was supposed to protect Chuck from harm. You tried to hurt Chuck?"

"Tried to force his prophecy to change," Dean answers. "We needed Chuck to tell us where you went with Ruby so we could stop you from killing Lilith. Cas sent me on ahead while he stayed behind as a diversion."

Sam looks utterly stricken. "I just wanted to stop her! I didn't know she was the seal."

"That was the plan all along, Sam." Dean lifts Castiel's arms – dangling deadweight at his sides – one after the other to rest on the formica tabletop, and then nudges him forward so his chest rests on the table's edge. "Ruby's, the demons', hell, even Cas' angel _brethren_ were in on it!" He practically spits the word "brethren". "We've got a bitch of a job ahead of us to try and fix this mess, if we even can. Shit, I was believing the angels were here to help me stop it all, but they were just stringing me along the whole time. Isn't that right, Cas?"

The angel's barely upright, but he meets Dean's glare unflinchingly. "Yes."

Sam's strength deserts him along with his last shreds of faith. He drops into the other chair with a thud. "_Why?_"

Dean takes hold of his shoulders and gives him a little shake, not with anger but in an attempt to keep his little brother from flying apart. "Call it a little heavenly extermination to clear the place out so it can be a private angel clubhouse." He sighs. He's _so damn tired. _"I wish you hadn't bought into Ruby's bullshit, Sammy, but you didn't really stand a chance." He jerks his head at the angel sagging over the table. "Cas here was following bullshit orders like a good little soldier, but he's the only one on our side now. Cas?" He waits until the other focuses on him. "You hearing anything on Angel Radio? Lucifer raining fire on us yet?"

"He is… occupied, for now. He is under pursuit from the Host, from what I have heard."

Dean nods, and draws Ruby's knife. Sam looks up, startled, but Castiel just watches with faint curiosity as Dean nicks the blade into his shirt collar. "We need supplies. Salt, first aid, coffee for that machine over there." He twists the blade, slicing the tag out of Castiel's collar and handing it to Sam. "And spare clothes—here's Cas' size. There's a shopping center about a mile after a right onto Black Creek Pike, the kid at the desk said. It should be safe enough if Cas isn't hearing anything, but be careful. If you see any weird shit, drop everything and get back here."

Sam turns the scrap of cloth in his hands. "I started the _Apocalypse_ and you want me… to go shopping," he says slowly.

"You got a problem with that, bitch?" Dean's picking through his wallet for a credit card, but he pauses and looks up at Sam, uncertainty tightening the corners of his eyes.

For a moment, Sam's frozen in abject misery, shoulders drooping, hands twisting restlessly; and then his head comes up and he takes a deep breath. "No problem… jerk."

Relief crashes through Dean – _That's my boy_ – but he turns back to Castiel so it doesn't show. "Get a load of gauze and tape, okay?"

"Sutures?"

Dean eases the point of the blade inside the tear in the back of the trenchcoat, and draws it down toward the hem with a sharp ripping sound, so the two halves fall open in the middle. He slices open the suit jacket and then the shirt in the same way. Pushing the layers of clothes aside, he studies the mess that is Castiel's back. "I think it's too late to stitch." Dean skates his fingertips lightly over the deep oozing tears in the angel's flesh and shakes his head. "I don't know if I can stitch something this deep anyway; it might fuck up the muscles."

"Okay." Sam crosses to the sink in the kitchenette to rinse his hands and splash his face. "What about guns?"

Dean's still examining Castiel's back, wincing involuntarily at a thick ragged flap of skin barely attached to his right shoulderblade. "Won't help against what's coming for us. Latin, salt, holy water—that'll have to do." He tilts his head at Ruby's knife on the table. "Still have this, too."

Sam's still looking a little shellshocked, but he collects the keys and heads out. Dean reaches for Castiel's cuff. "Let's get these off you."

He pulls both coat sleeves down off his left arm, dropping the halved clothing in a leaking heap on the floor. When he moves to the other side and straightens out Castiel's right arm, the angel stiffens and his eyes go wide. "I'll be careful."

"I know." His voice is barely above a whisper.

The right sides of the coats don't catch on the mangled wing—however Cas has it "folded", it's out of the way of human clothes. Dean inches the sleeves down his arm with extreme care anyway, and adds the pieces to the pile on the floor.

The shirt's open all down the back so he doesn't bother undoing the buttons, just pulls it off Castiel's front, hooking the loose tie over the back of the angel's head as he goes.

"Okay, sit tight—I'll get a wet towel."

"Wait!" At the angel's cry, Dean freezes. Castiel is struggling to rise from the chair. "Help me up."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! _Not_ a good idea."

"Yes," Castiel insists. "I need to."

He's obstinate enough to struggle until he ends up on the floor, and Dean'll just have to pick him up again, so he goes back and hoists him up. "Where you planning on going?"

"Door."

They shuffle over. He's straining to reach one hand around his own back now, nearly pulling out of Dean's grasp as he twists his arm up and back. "Cas?"

"Get me some of the blood."

Dean stares at him. "You're crazy."

"I am not. It is practical."

"_Practical,_ jeez." Shaking his head, Dean props Castiel against the doorframe. He swipes his hand down Castiel's back, gathering a cupped-palm full of gleaming red. Then he holds out the hand to the angel, and Castiel dips two fingers into the blood.

With sure strokes, he paints a sigil onto the door as high as he can reach. He whispers a word that tingles in Dean's ears, and the sticky red lines jump into sharp relief for an instant before sinking back into the blistered wood.

One hand braced on the doorframe, Castiel leans back to study his handiwork. His knees start to shake. His hand slips down the wall, and then he crumples completely. Dean lunges forward just in time to get an armful of limp, bloody angel.

"Okay, enough! You gonna come sit down now? Shit, Cas."

There's a faint smile on his lips as he flops back into the chair. "Sanctuary."

Dean can't help but feel a little grudging admiration, though he tries not to let it show. "Sanctuary, my ass. You think a little fingerpaint's gonna keep us safe?"

"Yes," the angel says simply, and Dean sighs.

"Okay. Can I wash the rest of it off now? Good. Sit there and don't move."

The towel quickly gets saturated. Dean rinses and squeezes it out and starts again and there's blood freakin' _everywhere_. Mostly down his neck and back and sides, but it's in his hair and streaking his arms and the Holy Tax Accountant pants are soaked where it pooled on the car seat. Dean wrings out the towel again, and then again. He probably should've just dumped Cas in the tub and hosed him down with the shower because the floor under his chair is ringed with watery red splatters and there are drips down the chair legs that'll all have to be mopped up.

"Lean forward," Dean says, and Castiel does, sinking heavily onto his elbows on the table. As gently as Dean runs the towel over his shoulders, the angel still goes rigid again. "Sorry," Dean mutters.

With the coating of blood wiped away, deep purple-black bruising is revealed—four oblong smudges ranged across the back of his neck with a fifth below, gouged under his left shoulderblade.

"Holy shit." Dean measures his own hand against the print and finds it dwarfed by the huge mark. "How is your back not broken?"

"It was. I fixed it."

Dean goes still, hand resting forgotten on the angel's upper back. "What else… broke?"

"It is immaterial. I mended the worst of it once the archangel released me."

"Except this." The torn place on Castiel's right shoulderblade is welling up with blood again, a slow red push that spills out from under the ragged edges of skin and muscle and starts a languid slide down his back. Dean grabs a clean washcloth and claps it over the gashes, pressing down in an attempt to stem the flow.

"That one is…" Castiel seems to grope for the right words, arm rising to gesture vaguely. Dean lifts one hand long enough to push Castiel's arm back down to the table and then resumes pressing the cloth tight. "…is different. It is at a spot where my vessel and I… merge. Angelic and human are blended there, and I cannot yet heal the angelic. Not without alerting my kin to my whereabouts."

"What about that bloodspell on the door?"

"That is mostly to keep you and your brother cloaked." Castiel's voice is starting to slur. "Too much… energy… will cancel out the blank spot."

"Okay, okay, speaking of energy, shut up now and save yours. Just lemme try and get this bleeding stopped."

Castiel sinks down to the table again, head cradled on folded arms. Dean keeps up a steady pressure on his back and tries not to think—of Sam, of angry demons and even angrier angels, of that blast of light he's – somehow – supposed to kill. "I'll just fuck it up."

He doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until Castiel answers, voice muffled against his arms. "You will not. I have every confidence in you."

"Yeah, well, you're delusional! Blood loss'll do that to you."

"It is not a hallucination that had I acted sooner, you may have succeeded at the convent. The fault is not yours. I am sorry, Dean."

An _angel_ is apologizing to _him_, and if that's not proof of the Apocalypse, he doesn't know what is. "Don't apologize, Cas, not to me."

"Why not? You…"

"Just don't!" Dean pushes Castiel's head back down, pushes the cloth against the seeping wound. "Got enough to think about," he mutters.

He stands over Castiel with both hands jammed firmly on his back and waits for Sam, waits for the bleeding to stop, waits for the cold knot in his stomach to just fill him up into one frozen block of dread. Cas' back is rising and falling very slightly beneath his hands with the slow, deliberate breaths he taking, and Dean wonders if that's good or not. He doesn't remember seeing him breathe before today.

"I don't need to, but it might help," Castiel murmurs.

"You listening in on my thoughts?"

"Like bells ringing, when you are worried. Loud and clear."

"Oh."

Dean hears the Mustang long before Sam pulls into the lot, triggering a flash of sheer aggravation that it's not the Impala. He hates its stupid rattles and the irritating ticking noise it makes when the engine shuts off and most of all he hates the wrongness of its door creaking.

He hates that it's Ruby's car, that Sam happily rode around in, outside the door right now instead of his own.

Sam's loaded down with rustling plastic bags. He dumps most of them onto the nearer bed and brings the last one straight to Dean and empties it onto the table. Gauze, antiseptic, rolled bandages, tape, spill across the surface. "What do you want me to do?"

"Wash your hands and then lay out tape and gauze. Back needs to be bandaged up."

"It stop bleeding?"

Dean cautiously lifts a corner of the washcloth. "It's slowed down, at least."

They work in tandem, Sam layering squares of gauze in stacks, Dean swiping antiseptic into the split skin, Sam tearing strips of tape. Finally the ravaged mess that is Castiel's back is swathed in clean white cotton. Dean eyes it for a long moment, but no red leaks through. He draws a long, shaky breath.

"Might be on the upswing here. How're you holding up, Cas?"

He rolls his head sideways and blinks once, very slowly. "I am… holding up, yes."

He's shaking, and smudges are darkening beneath his eyes. The cut on his cheekbone is starting to gape wide from the pressure of the rapidly swelling bruise. Dean winces and paws through the first aid supplies until he finds a cold pack. He twists it active and tucks it against Castiel's cheek, guiding the angel's hand up to hold it in place.

"Salt the door and window, Sam." Dean pulls a chair up beside Castiel. "And could you put on a pot of coffee?"

There are a hundred cuts, scrapes, and gouges down the angel's body. Dean works his way through them, cleaning, disinfecting, bandaging the worst. Sam places a mug in front of him, and a glass of ice water in front of Castiel, and Dean pauses and makes him drink it.

He scrubs out the deep bite on Castiel's arm, flushing it with hydrogen peroxide before wrapping it in a proper bandage. Sam putters in the background, opening packages of t-shirts and socks and taking toiletries into the bathroom.

"Why don't you lie down, Sam?" Dean suggests after a while. The scrapes down Castiel's right side are embedded with bits of bark and snapped-off pine needles and he's having to pick them all out one by one with tweezers. Sam's wearing a path between the window and the dining table and the pacing is getting to Dean.

"Can't."

"Then come over here and help me get his pants off."

_That_ stops his nervous pacing like a brick wall. "Dean! You can't… I don't… he's an _angel!_"

"He's an angel with a shitload of splinters in his hip. I'll do the dirty work if you're squeamish—just hold him up for me."

Sam's making an epic pissy-face at him, but at least he's momentarily forgotten to look like he's about to twitch out of his skin. He comes over and helps Castiel push back the chair and stand up, and if Sam stares up at the ceiling the whole time with a mortified expression, at least he keeps Castiel from crumpling to the floor while Dean unhooks his waistband. The pants are pretty much in shreds and stiffening up with drying blood to boot. Dean peels them down, mops away more blood from his legs, and then motions at the bed in the corner.

"Better lay him down over there. He looks wiped."

It's easier said than done. Castiel can't quite grasp how to step out of the last of his clothes. They can't drag him without ripping loose all that careful bandaging on his back. In the end, Sam gets him under the arms, Dean takes his ankles, and they hoist him over and onto the mattress.

Dean rolls him onto his left side and Castiel instantly curls inward. His eyes have gone glassy and despite their care, an ominous red patch has blossomed on the gauze covering his back. Dean swears quietly as he pries off his shoes and strips the ruined pants down his ankles. "Sit tight while I get more gauze."

He tapes down another layer, fingers smoothing carefully around the stark white outline. He has no idea what he's going to do if it doesn't stop bleeding.

Sam sidles in with an extra blanket from the closet—it's faded and pilled, but it smells clean, like laundry soap. He shakes it out and tosses it over Castiel, and Dean folds one edge up and out of the way.

Some of the splinters are practically broken-off tree branches, piercing the smooth skin stretched over Castiel's hipbone and impaled deep in the meat of his thigh. Dean slings a chair over and begins teasing out the jagged shards one after another, dropping them into a wastebasket by his knee as he works. The light dims, and Sam pulls the lampshade off one of the pin-up lamps on the wall and angles it toward where Dean's concentrating.

Castiel never twitches, not even when Dean has to go after several particularly deep slivers with a needle. Sam passes him wads of antiseptic-soaked cotton, and he swipes, and bandages some more, and finds a few more twigs to dig out.

At last he flips the blanket back over and tucks it tightly around Castiel. The angel's doubled-over in a tense curve on the bed, legs drawn up and back bowed. Dean clicks off the light and crouches by his head.

"Cas?"

Eyelids quiver and then creep up a fraction of an inch.

"I've done all I can for you. Try to rest, and… try to heal yourself, okay? You said this was sanctuary."

"If I… am cautious," Castiel whispers through dry lips. His eyes tip closed and he does that little settling-in motion down into the mattress.

Dean rises slowly and bends backward to ease the crick in his lower back. His eyes feel like they've been sandpapered. Slowly he stoops and snags the wastebasket, shuffling over to the table to sweep the profusion of empty first aid wrappings into it. He should mop up the blood before it dries; yeah, he should, it'll be easier the sooner he gets to it. Wearily he cants his head at the floor.

It's clean. Not even a smear remains, and even the chair's chrome legs gleam. The sad little heap of blood-soaked clothes is gone, too. Dean turns. Sam's sitting on the end of the other bed, elbows on his knees, hands dangling between them. "You cleaned up for me?"

Sam nods, a jerky up-and-down motion that makes him look gawky and terribly young. "Bought a few rolls of paper towels, 'cuz it looked like it was gonna get messy."

"It did." Dean looks at the huddled lump in the bed and wonders if anything he's done this day is any good. It doesn't feel like it—his brother's been slipping away from him all year and his angel might finally be on his side for real just in time to slip away into, dunno, the ether or something. Bobby is still four states away, still playing catch-up on End Times lore.

"I put everything in that bag there," Sam says, interrupting his thoughts. "I thought maybe, angel blood, we should burn it? You know, in case something evil tries to use it for something."

He's looking at Dean with a desperately hopeful expression, and it hits Dean how scared he is.

His little brother opened a door to Heaven's most serious prison and let _Lucifer_ walk free. Heaven and Earth are going to consider that the ultimate capital crime.

And Sam's got to be thinking this might be the screw-up that finally and irrevocably turns Dean from guardian to executioner.

So he walks over, crowds down onto the end of the bed beside his brother, and deliberately bumps him with his shoulder. "Thanks, Sammy. Good to know you've got my back."

He shudders, and some of the tense lines on his face smooth out. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry, too. Sorry I bossed you around instead of explaining shit… too much like Dad."

"We both are," Sam murmurs.

Dean shoulder-bumps him again, and then stands up before things get any mushier than they already are. "If I make a food run, will you eat any of what I bring back?"

* * *

Dean lets himself back into the motel room as quietly as he can, and nearly drops the bag of food. Sam's bent over Castiel's bed, one knee up on the edge of the mattress, straining to pin down the thrashing angel.

"What the hell?" Dean rushes over. "Sam?"

"Look," Sam's saying, "I told you he wouldn't be long!" He flings a frantic look over his shoulder at Dean. "Thank god you're back! He started freaking out about two minutes after you left! Yelling about you leaving "sanctuary" and trying to jump out of bed."

"Jeez." Dean sets down the food and crouches by the bed. "Cas. Cas, c'mon."

The split over his cheekbone has opened again, leaving smeared hatchmarks of red on the pillow. At the sound of Dean's voice, Castiel subsides, his eyes rolling up and around until he locates Dean past Sam's shoulder. He sags back. "Dean. You should not have left."

"We gotta eat, man. I was careful. And as quick as I could be."

Sam lets go and backs up, squeezing past his brother. Castiel is still looking at Dean, trying – and failing – to maintain a stern glare. "That symbol is drawn upon the door for a reason. You are in danger."

"And you're bleeding again." Dean takes hold of the angel's elbows. "Sit up. _Easy._ Lemme take a look."

Bright crimson is flooding the bandages. Dean teases the adhesive tape up and peels back the heavy layers of gauze. The skin underneath is still split into raw fissures, but only one place is actively bleeding—the worst spot, just above what's left of Castiel's right shoulderblade.

Dean touches a fingertip to the welling tear, and Castiel's back locks. He hisses something through clenched teeth.

"Hurts, huh?" There's no taunt in the observation. Dean rubs his knuckles; they're still aching and swollen from that punch he threw back in the waiting room. "I thought you didn't feel pain."

"We do. It is usually… more abstract. A fleeting condition we can ignore because we know how temporary it is."

Dean gets up for more bandages. "Little harder to ignore without the Instant Healing, I guess."

"This is true."

On his way back to the bed, Dean nudges the take-out bag with his foot. "Go ahead and dig in, Sam, it's gettin' cold. Turn, Cas. And brace yourself, I'm going to put pressure on this again."

He wraps his left arm around the front of Castiel's shoulders for leverage, and pushes hard on his back with a handful of gauze. The angel is motionless for the long minutes Dean bears down on the wound, head slightly bowed, bare feet jammed against the smooth floor.

Finally Dean eases up and peeks beneath the gauze. "Okay, it's slowed down again. Sit still," he commands, though Castiel hasn't moved since he began, and starts taping down bandages again. "No more flapping around, okay? Healing's never gonna take if you rip it open every few minutes."

That has Castiel swiveling around, an affronted expression on his face. "I do not…" He breaks off, and Dean barks out a short laugh.

"Got ya there, flyboy. Oh, hey, no—don't lie down. You're going to eat something, get a little fuel into that vessel."

Sam places one of the sandwiches onto a plate for the angel. The very thought of cheeseburgers had made Dean queasy, and yeah – french fries? – are definitely off the menu for the foreseeable future. Grilled chicken with the works seemed a safer bet, and the little café had some biscuits left over, homemade and sweet with honey.

Sam passes the plate and Dean sets it on the nightstand and stabs a finger at it. "Eat." He waits until Cas tucks the blanket tighter around himself and scoots up to the head of the bed before he settles at the table and unwraps his own meal.

Dean ends up being the only one who really eats dinner. Sam turns his sandwich around and around on its wrapper, taking the occasional mouse-bite when he feels Dean's gaze heavy on him. On Dean's other side Castiel deconstructs his sandwich, inspecting each of the components gravely before leaving them fanned across the plate. After a first dubious taste, he does devour the entire share of biscuits, though. Dean passes him the milkshake Sam's ignoring, and he finishes that, too, and then sits hunched over and shivering in the circle of yellow lamplight until Dean makes him lie down again.

"Anything on Angel Radio?"

He shakes his head, the pillow rustling softly with the motion. "They have not caught him, though they will not cease trying. I suspect Lucifer will go to ground until he can make plans, gather his forces. We are playing a long game here."

"Wonderful. I'm really looking forward to it."

Dean clicks off the lamps, leaving the hanging light over the table the only illumination in the motel room. Sam's given up pretending to eat; he slumps over the picked-at remains of his meal, hands scuffing slowly up and down his blue-jeaned thighs, over and over again.

"Go to bed, Sam."

"I couldn't sleep."

"Well, try, okay?" Dean's not above playing dirty if he has to. "'Cuz I can't rest until I know you're settled for the night, and I'm wiped, dude. Got a long drive tomorrow, and I gotta watch all our backs, including Angel Boy's over there. If you lie down, I can get a few hours of shut-eye."

The guilt trip works. Sam gets up and moves to the bed. After a minute where he just perches on the edge and stares at the floor, he finally scoots up and stretches out. "You want the other half of the bed?"

"In a minute." Dean moves carefully around the room, gathering trash, checking salt lines. By the time he clicks off the last light, Sam's got a pillow bunched beneath his head, and if he's not actually sleeping, at least he's doing a good impression of it.

* * *


	4. Part 4 of 4

See part 1 for disclaimer and notes.

Really big thanks to the many people who have read this story, and thank you for taking the time to leave feedback. Supernatural fans are pretty awesome!

* * *

**Comfort to the Enemy**

* * *

_Ruby strokes her fingers through his hair, and he can feel the cool swell of her breast beneath his cheek, his head cradled as it is in the slim cold curve of her arm. Her wrist flashes pale in the darkness as she twists it in offering. "It was always you, Sammy," she croons, and blood coats his tongue in a salty-sharp rush._

Sam jolts awake to phantom blood sliding thickly down his throat. He gags, lurches up out of bed, feet tangling in the bedsheet. One knee hits the floor before he wrenches free and charges for the bathroom, careening off bedside, chairback, doorframe on the way. He slams the toilet lid up and heaves.

Ruby slithers through the back of his mind, the scent he identifies as hers flooding his sinuses—musky sex and a metallic blood tang. He retches again but all he brings up is his scanty dinner. The blood is already absorbed, but his stomach keeps trying to wring it back out, keeps trying until Sam is utterly spent.

He lowers his forehead to the toilet tank. The supple coil of Ruby's limbs withdraws from around him, a departing whisper of coolness. Sam takes a shaky breath, spits, flushes, all without lifting his head.

The depth of what he's done is starting to pinch at the edges of his consciousness. He presses his forehead harder against the porcelain, trying to grind out flashes of images—Ruby splayed beneath him, smirking as he grabs her arm with desperate fists and latches on with his mouth; Dean, choking on a motel floor with Sam's hands white-knuckled on his throat; the convulsive leap of a terrified nurse's chest under Sam's palms a second before she goes limp beneath his pinning weight.

His stomach curls, but there's nothing left to bring up. Sam shoves away from the toilet and cranks the cold water tap fully open, the resulting gush splattering him with ice-cold droplets. He rinses and spits until his teeth ache and his face is dripping, but after-images still echo in his mind's-eye.

At last he give up and turns off the faucet, swiping his face in the crook of his elbow.

"You okay?"

Dean's low-pitched question greets him as Sam steps out of the bathroom. His brother's sprawled in one of the room's two armchairs that's been repositioned between the beds and the marked door. The knife rests easily on his lap and the serrated edge catches the light before Sam flicks the bathroom switch. Dean looks relaxed, legs stretched before him, head tipped back, but Sam can feel the wary alertness in him from across the room.

"Yeah. Just…" Sam can't finish.

"Getcha anything?"

"No, I'm…" Well, he's not _fine_, or even _okay_. "No, thanks," he says lamely as he crawls back into bed.

Dean's only reply is the soft creak of the chair as he shifts position, quietly watchful in the dark. Sam fights the knotted sheet smooth and draws it up over his shoulder. He rolls so his back is to Dean but then realizes that puts him facing Castiel in the other bed. The angel is utterly silent, utterly still. Sam can't tell if he awake or not, but he rolls over anyway and stares up at the ceiling.

The pictures still flash at the edge of his mind, blood spiral on a stone floor, Ruby exultant. Bobby dropping like a sack of flour, gunstock to the cheek. Dean coughing on a motel floor.

Then Ruby again, rolling the nurse's body aside with the indifference one shows a drained battery. She kicked dead leaves over the woman's face and arms while Sam, vibrating with building power, stalked back to the Mustang.

_If Dean could see that last one…_

Sam drags the pillow up over his face and presses his arm tight to hold it in place.

* * *

Dean dozes off again once Sam lies down. His brother's too twitchy to actually be asleep—Dean can hear the little distressed gasps he's making, the rustle of sheets as he startles at every click and hum in the room and on the road outside. But shit, Sam's staying put, Cas is resting, and Dean's wiped; and so he lets himself drift off.

Wingbeats pass overhead in his dreams.

Deep silence nudges him awake some hours later, his hand tightening on the hilt of the knife reflexively. He listens; Sam's breathing evenly, the pillow shielding his face having slid down to the bed again. Cas isn't moving and the room is still. Dean sits up slowly, drawing his feet in so he can stand up quietly. He rolls his head until the vertebrae in his neck pop, one after the other down the length, and checks his watch. Just shy of four a.m.—probably the best time he'll get for what he needs to do.

Dean strips off his t-shirt and replaces it with one from the packages Sam just bought. He snags Sam's jacket, too; his own is stiff with blood, and if he gets caught out there, bloody clothes will compound his troubles.

There are matchbooks in the ashtray on the dresser, and a big can of rocksalt next to the window. He palms the ketchup keyring and slips out the door.

Birds are just starting a raucous twittering in the trees behind the motel, and a light drizzle is falling, beading on the Mustang and haloing the streetlights. Dean opens the driver's door, releases the brake, and puts his shoulder to the doorframe. Slowly the Mustang starts to roll, crunching over gravel. He cranks the wheel one-handed until the car points downhill, towards the town.

When it picks up speed, Dean ducks in, thumping into the driver's seat and snatching his feet in quickly after him. The Mustang coasts all the way down the hill before Dean turns the key.

A closed service station on the far side of town gets him the rest of what he needs—a five-gallon plastic bucket, a length of hose torn from the air machine, a hulking SUV awaiting repairs with a nearly full gas tank. Dean siphons gasoline into the bucket and then drives very carefully the rest of the way out of town.

There's some kind of small industrial complex just off the highway—welding and fabricating, the sign says. Big steel-sided buildings, a wide empty parking lot, a small concrete block office building surrounded by straggly junipers. Dean turns in and cruises slowly past the buildings, turns, and goes past them again, revving the engine to a roar. No one comes out to investigate, so he heads around back, where yellow-tinged streetlights cast a sickly glow over a row of closed bay doors. At the far end, another bigger concrete block building leaves a corner of the back lot in deep shadow.

Dean pulls into the shadow and parks. The odor of gasoline is overwhelming—the open bucket is venting fumes through the interior even with the broken windows, and he gets out and bends over, coughing his lungs clear.

Once he can breathe freely again, he lifts the bucket out onto the ground, sets the salt can beside it, and leans in to open the glove compartment and grope beneath the seats. There's nothing of Sam's left in the car. Dean checks the backseat and then goes around to ease open the trunk, slowly, so the hinges don't trigger a spark.

There's a devil's trap painted on the bottom.

A _devil's trap_ in the trunk of _Ruby's_ fucking Mustang.

"What. The. Hell." Dean touches one white line; the paint is dry, but it feels slick beneath his finger, new. Why in _hell_ was Ruby driving around in a car with a booby-trapped trunk?

Dean closes his eyes and leans his head on the upraised trunk lid. His stomach is churning.

_Sam insisting on tracking down one of Lilith's minions. With Ruby, not Dean. Ruby, who got him turned on to this drinking-blood-out-of-demons shit in the first place._

Dean sees Sam's blood-smeared face just before he blasted the demon out of poor Jimmy Novak's possessed wife and he hears Sam upchucking his guts out in the motel bathroom, and he feels like puking himself.

He forces himself to open his eyes and bend into the trunk. He doesn't see anything in the scant light of the trunk bulb and distant streetlights. Nothing obvious, anyway, like a distress message scratched in the paint or broken-off fingernails. He runs his hands around the interior, but there's nothing.

Sam was right—the trunk was empty. And the implication that he'd seen it recently enough to know sends Dean's stomach into another cold spin.

There's a puff of wind, and the drizzle patters down harder. At the edge of the trunk opening, something dark flutters in the breeze. Dean pinches it off of a rough spot in the metal.

At first he thinks it's a clump of threads, but then he runs them through his fingers and feels the glossiness of hair. Fairly long, so it's not Sam's, not that Sam would fit back here no matter what sick game he and Ruby might have played.

It could be Ruby's, he tells himself. It's dark, her latest meatsuit sported dark hair, she could have bumped her head while watching Sam paint a devil's trap in the trunk of a car she prized enough to get a fake registration for.

Yeah. He's not convincing himself here. Deliberately, Dean coils the strands of hair into a circle and lays it gently on the floor of the trunk. His heart aches _really fucking bad_ right about now.

Dean goes back and shakes salt heavily across the car's interior. He hoists the bucket and pours gasoline down the driver's seat, and then all along the backseat, giving the dark bloodstains an extra slosh. On the passenger side, he slops gas through the open window and onto the dashboard until it drips down into the glove compartment.

The trunk is last. Dean switches the bucket for the salt can again and scatters white granules thickly through it.

For a moment, he stares down into the trunk. If he could think of a prayer or an appropriate bit of Latin, now would be the time to speak it, but his mind is numb.

His eyes are watering, from the fumes, of course. Dean steps back, fumbling the matchbook from his pocket, and tears off a match. He half-turns, strikes it, and touches the flame to a corner of the book. As it flares, he flicks both into the trunk and leaps away.

The resulting 'whump' is surprisingly soft, but strong enough to pick Dean up and toss him across the wet pavement as he's sprinting away. His feet lift off the ground and for a second he's airborne. Then he remembers to tuck and roll, and coming down hurts, but not as much as if he'd spread-eagled face-first onto the rough parking lot. He bounces to his feet around the corner of the concrete block outbuilding.

Ruby's piece-of-shit Mustang is burning fiercely. Orange-black flames roll out of the windows and trunk and smoke billows heavily from the undercarriage. The paint blisters, and there's a deep 'pop' as the cracked windshield shatters out across the hood.

Thin rivulets of flame drip out the open driver's door and run beneath the car, joining the other fluids pooling there. There's a brief pause where Dean hears only the vicious crackle of flames, and then a 'poof' as the undercarriage ignites. A shriek of stressed metal signals the gas tank splitting open. He spins back behind the wall, instinctively covering his head with both arms, and the car explodes.

It levitates into the superheated air and then slams down, hard. When it crashes, Dean peeks a quick glance around the building.

A cyclone of fire roars out of the trunk, spiraling straight up into the sky. Tongues of flame spin off it, hissing away into the misty rain.

The Mustang sinks into a burning hulk fed by blazing upholstery and melting rubber. It'll be nothing but ash and scorched metal bones by the time it's done cooking.

The drizzle has strengthened into a steady drumming rain. Dean turns up the collar of Sam's jacket and plunges his hands into the pockets. He should get some grim satisfaction from seeing Ruby's car burn, but he only feels cold.

It's still blazing as he trudges off toward the highway, but he doesn't look back. He's keeping the cold at bay by mulling over the cars he saw on the way out here. Cars parked safe distances from houses, or in back of that service station. One of them will be a decent temporary replacement for Ruby's wannabe-cool Mustang.

* * *

Sam's stretched out on his bed when Dean returns, damp-haired and watching CNN with the sound off. His eyes get wide as Dean slips through the door in a rush of mingled scents—rain and gasoline and smoke. Nervously he rubs his hands on the thighs of his new jeans.

Dean's just too tired for a confrontation that might yield answers he isn't ready to hear. He plunks a bakery bag and a carton of milk on the table and heads for the bathroom, peeling off Sam's sodden jacket as he goes.

"I'm gonna take a shower. Leave the honey-glazed donuts for Cas."

The bathroom hasn't been renovated since the motel was built in the 1950s, but it's clean, cleaner than most of the places he's been in the recent past, hell, cleaner even than Bobby's bathroom. The water's decently hot, too, and he stands under it, one hand braced on smooth tile, head bowed beneath the spray, long after the soap's rinsed away.

Cas is awake when he comes back out. The stunned haze has faded from his eyes, replaced by his normal quizzical interest in his surroundings. The coffee pot is burping gently and sending out heavenly-smelling steam and Sam's at the table, turning a blueberry muffin into a pyramid of moist purple crumbs. Dean makes a beeline to the cupboard for a mug, knocking back a long swallow of coffee before crossing to Castiel's bed.

He drops to its edge, nudging the angel upright. "Lemme see."

Castiel sits up obediently, turning his back to Dean. A splotch of dark blood stains the gauze, so Dean teases loose the adhesive tape with painstaking care.

His caution is unnecessary—the damage has nearly vanished. The deep fissures carving Castiel's skin have fused into slightly raised silver lines. There are a few knotted lumps where the muscles are still knitting, but the dozens of gouges and scratches down his side have closed over. Even the terrible bruising on the side of his face is little more than yellowish shadows and a pink line on his cheekbone.

Dean presses on the shoulderblade that only a day before was a mangled wreck of tissue and bone. "That hurt?"

"No."

"Can you move it? Lift your arm; now rotate it. Can you open and close your fist? Twist back and reach as high as you can. Yeah, that's good—you've got range of motion back." He lets his hand slide away as Castiel arches his back and gives a little rippling shudder, for all the world as if he's settling feathers into place. And Dean's afraid of what the answer might be, but he asks anyway. "How… how's the wing?"

"Mending." Castiel shifts so he's facing Dean, and his expression is maybe one step removed from impassive—there's, _maybe_, a hint of pleased satisfaction drawing up his lips and crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Slowly, but mending. I think I will be able to fly again eventually. Thank you."

"I didn't do anything!" Dean protests. He covers his discomfort by leaning over and snagging his mug from the nightstand. "I just… made you take a little downtime."

"And the reminder was appreciated." Castiel abruptly flips back the blanket and stands up. "You wish to continue the journey."

Dean lurches off the bed. "Jeez! Pants, Cas! Pants first, _then_ walking around!"

Sam might be smiling faintly – it's hard to tell, because he nearly dislocated himself whipping his chair around so his back is to the bed – so to keep him smiling Dean makes an exaggerated show of grumbling and averting his eyes while he flings clothing at Cas. He can only pray the guy knows shorts go on first.

He busies himself fixing a mug for Castiel while quiet cloth rustlings commence behind him. He pours in coffee to the halfway mark and then brings the level to the rim with milk, because if the angel's going to be riding with them he needs to experience coffee, but Dean's not sure he can handle a fully-caffeinated Cas.

"Is this acceptable?" he hears from behind him, and Dean braces himself and turns.

The dark jeans are a little long and loose, and they'll have to swap out the Tax Accountant shoes for a decent pair of boots at some point, but, "Yeah, you're good," Dean tells him with relief.

Castiel runs his fingers down the dark grey sleeves, either pleased with his new attire or just perplexed by it, who knows. And if his hair's standing on end in ruffled tufts, well, that's just a minor grooming flaw that can be ignored.

Dean thumps the mug of milky coffee onto the table and points. "Sit. Drink this and have a donut."

Castiel pulls out a chair. With great care he extracts one of the sticky donuts from the bag and sets it precisely on a napkin. Dean waits until he raises the mug and takes a swallow – it makes the angel actually blink – before he pulls out his own chair and reaches for the bakery bag.

One down with the 'what will he eat' problem, one to go. Dean stretches a leg out under the table and "accidentally" kicks Sam, and after an almost-too-long pause Sam flicks a blueberry across the table at Dean.

It's a start.

* * *

Dean swipes a wad of wet paper towels down the back of the door and then stuffs them into the plastic bag along with all the other blood-soaked clothes and linens. Once they reach a deserted stretch of road, he'll stop long enough to torch the whole bundle. Sam's probably right—no sense borrowing trouble with angel blood.

He shoos Castiel out into the rain ahead of him and Sam follows, the laptop salvaged from Ruby's car tucked protectively under one arm. Dean jerks his head past the side of the motel. "Head for the Nova around the back."

He nearly plows into Castiel's back when the angel jerks to a stop rounding the corner. Castiel cocks his head at the shiny dark green car waiting there.

"You have procured a new vehicle."

"Yup." Dean dodges around him to open the driver's side door and deposit the bags inside. Sam gives it a long look, but he doesn't say a word. He hunches the laptop higher under his arm, a muscle in his jaw jumping.

"That is good." Castiel steps up to the open door and bends, peering inside. "I did not like the previous one."

"You and me both, buddy."

Castiel straightens and reaches over the roof. He swirls rainwater with two fingers and murmurs a few quiet words. Sam tilts his head—it's not Latin, but he doesn't recognize what language it might be. While he and Dean watch, Castiel strokes his fingers through the beaded water, painting the roof with invisible symbols. He steps back with a satisfied nod.

"Shields at maximum, huh?" Dean says. "Does it work against cops, too?" Castiel gives him a blank stare. "Never mind. We ready to go?"

When Castiel has situated himself in one corner of the backseat, Dean reaches for the wires dangling beneath the steering column. The engine catches with a well-cared-for roar that is music to his ears. She'll be okay in his hands while he borrows her.

He dials his phone once he pulls out of the motel lot. "Bobby? Dean. Nah, we're good—stopped for the night, but we're on the road again. Got Cas with us; Angel Radio's quiet, but you hearin' anything?" He listens while the wipers slap back and forth. "Okay. We'll be careful. See you in a day or so."

Dean tucks his phone away and presses down on the accelerator. So "good" doesn't exactly describe their current sitrep—he's a wanted man, he's riding with a grounded angel who's got his own deathsquad after him, and his brother just may have done darker things than he could ever have suspected a week ago.

They're alive. Together. In a tolerable car on the way to an old friend's place.

_Good_ is relative.

.

_fin_

_._

I killed the trenchcoat, I did. I'm sorry! Dean'll get Cas a new one if he looks forlorn enough, I think.

There may be a sequel covering more of their trip to Bobby's, I have ideas knocking around in my head right now. But I'm a slow writer (also have a full-time job and kids & a house to take care of) and I have a couple other stories I've been working on. It may happen, just don't hold your breath :)

Thanks for reading, I really mean it.


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